Most of us don't associate the word "creative"
with "selling." For some, "creative" conjures
up images of starving artists dressed in black, "trying to
make a statement" with paint and old auto parts.
"Creative" people wear berets and read The Village
Voice. Salespeople wear ties and read The Wall Street
Journal.

At least those are the popular stereotypes. But don't
salespeople create things, too-like opportunity? Don't
salespeople create demand for products and services? Customer
satisfaction? Wealth?

The nature of the sales process is, in fact, creative. A good
salesperson creates demand where it doesn't exist. He or she
creates a message (the sales pitch) using various media (face
calls, telephone calls, written presentations, slide shows) that
influence an audience (the prospect). A salesperson explores new
territories (cold calls), introduces new ways of thinking
(persuades prospects) and makes the world a better place (provides
customer satisfaction).

OK, maybe I'm overstating the case a bit. Lots of perfectly
productive salespeople are nothing more than harvesters of existing
business-they take orders, fill out paperwork, collect their
commissions and go home. And they never break rules.

Those salespeople still play a role in our economy, although
they're on their way to being replaced by order-processing
technology. But I'm here to talk about creative selling, the
favorite activity of wild, vibrant, risk-taking sales fanatics-the
Michelangelos of sales. These people use the power of ideas to
create customer satisfaction and wealth for themselves and their
companies.

Think of Creative
Ideas
Ideas are scarce. They don't exist until someone creates them.
They can be copied, but only after the original hits the market.
Because there's nothing to compare them to, the price of an
original idea is determined solely by perceived value. There is no
competitive bidding or price shaving for market share-just the
seller's ability to create perceived value by presenting the
idea as a solution to the buyer's needs.

This excerpt was reprinted from Dave
Donelson's Creative Selling: The Foolproof System To Unleash
Your Sales Potential.

Motivate Your Customers

Now let's talk about motivation. Why do customers buy from
you? Is it because your product or service is the best on the
market? Is it because you have strong relationships with your
clients? These things can't hurt, but you need more than just a
good widget to sell to a customer. You need ideas, because ideas
are motivators.

The first step in coming up with ideas to wow your clients is to
find out as much as possible about their businesses. I like to
build a file for each prospect that contains everything I can find
that pertains to his or her business. That file doesn't only
have to contain items related to your product or service; it should
cover anything you can find about the prospect's business,
market and customers. And the information should be gathered as if
you were the prospect. Ideally, you'll learn to think
like your client.

Use a little library or online research and a little common
sense, and you'll be able to answer your questions pretty
accurately. If you want to know the dollar volume of the
prospect's market, for example, visit the U.S. Census
Bureau's Web
site. If you want to know how many locations the prospect
operates, check the Yellow Pages. This kind of information is
readily available at no cost to you.

Regardless of the type of business the prospect operates,
ultimately he or she sells something. So find out who the
prospect's customers are and why they buy this type of product
or service.

Once you've learned about the basics of the client's
business, you can develop a client goal to be reached or a need to
be satisfied. Then it's time to get down to specifics on how to
reach that goal. That's where ideas come in.

Creative sellers with open minds have an endless market for
their ideas. But most people don't consider themselves creative
enough. Some of us actually have lots of ideas but are hesitant to
use them because we're afraid they won't be good enough.
The problem with that kind of thinking is that it puts the onus of
judgment on the wrong person. The salesperson or business owner
shouldn't judge the merits of an idea-leave that to the
prospect. If the customer thinks it's good-it's good!
Put your idea in front of him or her using the best presentation
skills you have, and let that prospect make the final judgment.

This excerpt was reprinted from Dave
Donelson's Creative Selling: The Foolproof System To Unleash
Your Sales Potential.

The Merits of Brainstorming

To come up with ideas to sell, you need to continually practice
brainstorming. The techniques I'm talking about are the same
ones you use in a group meeting, only I explore their use on an
individual level.

Here are the steps: Start by writing down your prospect's
goal. On the page below the goal, make a list of ways your
company's products or services can help the prospect reach that
goal. Follow the ground rules of successful brainstorming while
you're writing.

Next, review the ideas and combine or extend them, creating new
ideas. Again, don't be judgmental. It's not time to throw
out bad ideas. This combining and extending process should add
ideas to your list, not remove them.

There are several ways to stimulate your brainstorm production.
Look inside the company for internal solutions. Many companies
package their products or create bundles of services designed to
meet the needs of certain categories of customers.

Another good source of ideas that come out of brainstorming is
free association with nonrelated concepts. This is a fancy term for
taking an idea from someplace else. One of my associates monitors
TV commercials and magazine ads to see if there's a slogan or
concept he can use as an idea springboard. For example, he'll
take a slogan like "You're in good hands with
Allstate" and come up with "You're in good form with
Diet Rite." He's not stealing ideas, just using them to
spark his own.

Another way to start the process is by examining past sales to
similar customers. See if you can determine why customers made
those purchases. Talk to the salespeople. Pick their brains about
the circumstances that led to those sales.

1. There's no such thing as a bad
idea. Write it down even if it's impossible. Make
sure to write it down if anyone in the room says, "We've
never done that before." Reserve judgment until later.

2. See how outrageous you can
be. Associate freely and write it down. The wilder the
idea, the better. Crazy ideas spark more ideas-mundane ones are
dead ends.

3. Fill the page-then start
another one. Quantity is your goal because the more
ideas you list, the better the odds of finding a good one.

4. Don't stop when you come to the
"right" idea. There could well be a better one
waiting to come out.

Choosing an Idea

The next step is to choose the one idea you feel most confident
presenting. It should open a clear and direct path to the
prospect's goal. Judge the idea by its ability to achieve that
goal.

There is one final check to make before preparing the
presentation of your idea: See if you can clearly express your idea
in a sentence or two. Try to say it aloud without taking a breath.
If you can't, re-examine the idea to see if it's too
complicated. Overwhelming a prospect with a proposal that you
can't explain in simple terms is a sure way to lose a follow-up
call.

Now that you've come up with the ideas, pick one and pitch
it. That's right, pick one-any one. It doesn't matter
which idea you choose as long as you know your company can deliver
it. You can't choose one based on your knowledge of the
customer's likes and dislikes because you haven't met the
prospect-so just pick one and go with it.

That's when you'll learn the secret to creative selling:
Your real goal on the first call is not necessarily to sell that
first idea-it's to gather as much information about the
prospect as you can so subsequent ideas hit the mark.

As you gather information, you're accomplishing several
other things. You make a strong first impression by showing a
willingness to invest your time in a study of the
prospect's needs. You establish yourself as an idea
resource. If you bring prospects something of value, they are
likely to see you again. Above all, your idea will provoke a
discussion about the prospect's needs. It's through such
discussions that you learn what they will buy from you.

Engineering A Sale

My friend Matt is both a salesperson and an engineer-a
very unusual combination. Matt had a prospect who was responsible
for the public structures owned by a county government, everything
from playground equipment to bridges.

Matt specializes in the structural analysis of communications
towers. This prospect sent out a request for proposals (RFP) for
inspection of the county's communications towers, which are
used for two-way radios and other communications systems.

Matt looked beyond the RFP at the entire assortment of
structures his prospect managed. Instead of just submitting a
proposal for the towers, Matt also pointed out that the county
bridges were subject to the same stresses (weather, materials
deterioration) as the towers. These stresses were potentially
dangerous, so Matt proposed an inspection of the bridges using the
same rigorous professional methods his firm applied to the
towers.

This wasn't covered in the RFP, but Matt made the sale by
creating an opportunity to study a potential problem that
hadn't existed in the prospect's mind. He then created a
solution to the need by designing a service that his firm
didn't normally provide (bridge engineering). My friend's
mind was open to the possibilities and he used creative selling
techniques to create an opportunity.